Further Reading

But it's largely a futile exercise, because websites and advertising networks are free to ignore the signal. Even Yahoo, which had been honoring Do Not Track requests, decided to stop doing so this week.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation may have a solution. Last night, the group announced "Privacy Badger," an extension for Chrome and Firefox "that analyzes sites to detect and disallow content that tracks you in an objectionable, non-consensual manner."

Privacy Badger doesn't automatically block ads. The group explained:

When you visit websites, your copy of Privacy Badger keeps note of the "third-party" domains that embed images, scripts and advertising in the pages you visit.

If a third-party server appears to be tracking you without permission, by using uniquely identifying cookies to collect a record of the pages you visit across multiple sites, Privacy Badger will automatically disallow content from that third-party tracker. In some cases a third-party domain provides some important aspect of a page's functionality, such as embedded maps, images, or fonts. In those cases, Privacy Badger will allow connections to the third party but will screen out its tracking cookies.

Users who install Privacy Badger can whitelist websites. Additionally, "Advertisers and other third-party domains can unblock themselves in Privacy Badger by making a strong commitment to respect Do Not Track requests," the EFF said.

Privacy Badger works, but it's an "alpha" release so the EFF wants interested users to test it out before attempting to convince larger populations of people to install it. Privacy Badger can be installed on Chrome or Firefox here, and bugs can be reported on GitHub.

The EFF also helps maintain the HTTPS Everywhere extension, which attempts to force websites to encrypt communications with users who have the extension installed.

Promoted Comments

This sounds like pure win. However in the advertising/privacy arms race, what will the retaliation be...

edit: Does keeping this on for all sites affect ad-viewer rates? Will sites that depend on advertising revenue to support their content still get "credit" if this is enabled and they aren't whitelisted?

It doesn't block all ads, only those that appear to be doing tracking. If there is no tracking, the ad will be displayed, and therefore will be able to earn revenue. Seems fair to me.